Thunder Before The Storm? Another Citibank Account ‘Compromised’

This morning, I got a VM from CitiCard asking me to call in regarding a security problem with my card. Not trusting a random VM, I went to the Citi website and called the number for reporting fraud. Turns out the VM was legit. My card has been “compromised” – employees can’t tell me why, of course – and I’m getting a new card and new account. They are over-nighting the new card to me. Was told by customer service rep that she had dealt with “several” calls like mine today.

There is no fraudulent activity on my account.

Why won’t Citi tell us where the breach occurred? If certain retailers repeatedly cause these breaches, I’d like to know so I can avoid using my card there in the future. If Citi causes them – I’d like to know that too.

We don’t want to jump the gun here: this could just as easily be a merchant whose computer was stolen. Still, we get twitchy when the words “Citibank” and “compromised” are put in the same sentence. If this is another massive security breach, we want to be in on the ground floor.

Any other Citibank customers who have had their cards compromised? Mail us.

“Just got a automated call from citibank about compromised account, transferred to CSR and they could not tell me where the breach occured. Sounds like this is happening again after reading your post from 6/1/06. I did demand that they overnight me the replacement card and they had no problem. Tell everyone not to allow them to take 5 or 6 days to get you a replacement card when THEY were the ones that had their security compromised.

This is very inconvenient and I think they should be providing some sort of incentive for us customers to stay with Citibank. I’ll be eagerly reading your blog looking for any updates.”

“My account has not been compromised, yet. However, I just “BARELY”got off the phone with a CitiCard rep who was pushing (for 10 minutes) the identity theft program they are offering. Now, being the cynical person that I am I wonder if they are not randomly compromising accounts to inflate the need and increase the participation for this program.”

Strongly recommend avoiding Citi. Their own employees (the ones I know) avoid them like the plague (and encourage me to do likewise), their customer service makes ordinary banking customer service look REALLY GOOD, and the aforementioned fraud seems to be endemic to them. They aren’t the only big bank, but they sure get mentioned more than most with fraud.